Collaborative academic projects often take longer than originally anticipated, not just because of the normal delays of coordinating the efforts of busy people, but also because initially modest goals can become more ambitious as participants delve into their subject. We confess to both these sins with respect to preparing the first edition of this text. Our original plans made in 1990 were very modest. We intended to use an expanded version of the chapter on benefit-cost analysis in the text Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice by David Weimer and Aidan Vining as the conceptual foundation for a collection of cases. Our goal was to produce a book that would be conceptually sound, practically oriented, and easily accessible to both students and practitioners. Though our final product was far different in form and content than we initially planned, we believe that our first edition was such a book.

Our plans evolved for a number of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, through our teaching of undergraduate and graduate students as well as our experiences training government employees, we realized that many topics demanded extended treatment if the essential basics were to be conveyed effectively and if solid foundations were to be laid for further learning of advanced topics. We also decided that fully integrating illustrations and examples with concepts and methods is pedagogically superior to presenting independent cases. The result was a series of chapters that develop conceptual foundations, methods of application, and extensions of cost-benefit analysis through numerous practical examples and illustrations.

Our own use of the book in teaching, as well as comments from other teachers and students, helped us identify several areas for improvement in the second, third, and fourth editions. In addition to adding new material to each edition, we revised and reorganized a number of chapters to make the presentation clearer and more effective.

NEW TO THIS EDITION

Faculty and students will find improvements in presentation and updating of content throughout this new edition. Some of the significant improvements include: